Winged Wonders of the Eastern Ghats

There is a scene in the horror film Heretic (2024; starring a terrifyingly macabre Hugh Grant) where Sister Paxton says she would like to become a butterfly after her death, so she can visit her loved ones and let them know that she is thinking of them. The end of the film features a callback to this scene, where she escapes after a traumatising ordeal, and a beautiful butterfly lands on her finger, implying it was Sister Barnes, her colleague and friend, who perished after saving her life.

In some Irish and Celtic traditions, butterflies are believed to represent the souls of the departed. Butterflies and moths have long captured the imagination of pop culture creators — from films exploring themes of loss or transformation (Silence of the Lambs), to children’s books teaching patience (The Very Impatient Caterpillar) or celebrating diverse forms of beauty (The Not-So Colourful Butterfly). There seems to be considerable interest in their beauty, their fragility and transformation from egg to adult butterfly. Reams are written about “ugly” caterpillars (a problematic narrative) turning into beautiful butterflies. In Indian folklore as well, butterflies depict the journey of the soul, while in others (like Greek and Japanese), they may lead people to their destinations, here or in the afterlife.

Eastern Ghats Butterfly Trail

While walking along the hilly pathways of Paderu, a town in the Alluri Sitharama Raju district of Andhra Pradesh, TS Pranav, a naturalist and my guide to this region, and I followed small fluttering creatures moving from flower to flower, and the analogy seemed accurate. On this pathway, as sunlight broke through the canopy, among birdsong and mist, we watered down the myths and arrived at the science behind them. Butterflies do lead us to healthy ecosystems.

Paderu sits within the Eastern Ghats, in the Araku Valley, and the trail is flanked by tall sal trees and coffee plantations, remnants of the British colonial presence. Spices like pepper, tamarind, ginger, and turmeric make their presence felt as their scents mingle with the cooler air.

India has 1,300 species of butterflies, and 900 of these are found in the Northeast. The Eastern Ghats host around 273 species of butterfly. The walk I was on introduced me to the common pierrot, a small, white butterfly with black spots that uses defence deception. It has a small tail that serves as a false antenna to divert a predator’s attention from its actual, vulnerable head. Incidentally, the Pierrot is a Schedule I species, attracting the same protection as the tiger.

Butterflies aren’t endemic to the Eastern Ghats, but the easy route from the Northeast makes species like the chocolate pansy regulars here. A common sailor flitted past us, true to its name, a happy-go-lucky fellow, gliding as if moving on water.

Ecosystem indicators, survival, and migration

Butterflies are the poster child for nature and perform various duties. “They are great indicators of a healthy ecosystem and climate change,” says Isaac Kehimkar, author of Butterflies of India, and Chairman, iNaturewatch Foundation. “Butterflies are extremely sensitive to any change in their preferred ecosystem — heat, cold, pollution, or dust. When a habitat degrades because of construction work, loss of forests to farmlands, industrialisation, and so on, these insects will simply leave. They don’t have the privilege of learning to cope with the changes; they will die, and their short lifespans do not afford them the luxury of staying on. If butterflies and birdsong are absent, there is something wrong with that environment.”

Migration is a notable example of insects moving to greener pastures. Some species of butterflies, including common crows and some species of tiger butterflies, migrate from the Western Ghats to the Eastern Ghats at the onset of the Southwest monsoon. And here’s the thing that will make you clutch your proverbial pearls in shock. These butterflies die during the journey because of their short life spans. Before they do, they mate and lay eggs, and the butterflies that emerge from the new pupae go on to complete the migration (how do they know to do that?). And the same thing happens when they travel back. The generation of butterflies that starts the migration is different from the one that ends it! Whatever is this sorcery?

Habitat and host plants

“Some species in the Eastern Ghats, like the common banded peacock and the painted jezebel, are very fussy,” says Isaac. “These occur only in forests, while others inhabit grasslands, without a tree in sight. This is because caterpillars are dependent on certain host plants (or associates), without which they cannot survive. For example, a caterpillar staying on a lemon plant will only eat lime and kadipata leaves, and nothing else, even if you were to find it close to death and try and nurse it back to life with random plants.” The habitat will tell you what lives there and vice versa. For instance, a common caster sighting on the Paderu trail made us aware of castor bean (oil) plants in the region.

This host plant dependency ceases once the adult butterfly emerges and switches from chewing mechanisms to a tube to suck nectar, salt, nitrates, etc. Some species, like the black rajah, common and great nawabs (all found in the Eastern Ghats), prefer overripe fruits, fallen fruits, dung, animal urine, rotting frog or crab carcasses, or shrimp. Rotting carcasses have nitrates and other minerals, which provide essential energy for faster butterflies. Males perform a ritual called mud-puddling, where they suck traces of salt from moist soil. Salt is important for males because the female, who has no salt in her nectar meals, will select the saltiest male as her suitor. Salt is vital for the viability of her eggs, and she will choose a male who will deliver the goods. During the mating ritual, she gets the salt from him and stores the sperm. When she finds the right host plant, she lays her eggs. 

It was this concept of host plants that drew Rajasekhar Bandi, an educator and naturalist working with WWF-India as Godavari Landscape Coordinator, towards butterfly documentation. He says: “Their life cycle is linked to one species of plant, and science tells us that on average, every year, two to three plant species disappear from the planet. We won’t even know how many butterflies could be disappearing, not only globally, but in the Eastern Ghats as well. Add to that the clearing of forests for shifting cultivation, use of pesticides that kill caterpillars, and the migration patterns changing because of monsoon shifts, flowering and fruiting shifts and so on. The impact is manifold for butterflies.”

Expanding knowledge about Eastern Ghats butterflies

Butterflies are prey for creatures like lizards, birds, and other insects, establishing themselves firmly in the food chain. They are also pollinators, like bees, performing a vital role in the ecosystem. Rajasekhar says, “Globally, insects pollinate one in three of the fruits and vegetables. Most of our food chain is reliant on this. According to this piece in Science, ecologist Sarah Cusser finds, ‘In cotton fields, (bees) are responsible for about 66 per cent of the pollination. But the work of butterflies and flies still adds up to about $120 million per year of extra cash for cotton farmers in Texas.’ If you quantify the value, it goes beyond food security, extending to the well-being of communities and people across the globe. All of us need to understand them better in order to protect them.”

Rajasekhar wishes the gap between science and the education system would narrow, and children could learn to look beyond the beauty and life cycle of butterflies, to the impact they have on our planet and what their absence could unleash on it.

Just like larger mammals, butterflies enjoy protection under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, making it illegal to keep captive butterflies or to have an enclosed butterfly park, like the ones in Singapore or Hong Kong, without the government and forest department’s permission. 

“Our education systems, while robust in terms of degrees that ensure employment, have allowed science to take a backseat,” he says. “The first long-term documentation and survey of the southern Eastern Ghats happened in 1951. After that, species-based conservation has been largely ignored, leading to a knowledge gap that spans generations. The southern parts were better explored, but the northern part, which is rich in terms of butterfly diversity because it has all the Himalayan plant species and bird species, was accessible only from 1950 to 1970. After that, the Eastern Ghats in northern Andhra were under the Maoist regime, cutting access off.” Better research on this region is required, but it hasn’t happened because of these and other historical reasons.

The butterflies of the Eastern Ghats may be understudied, but enthusiasm for them is high. Since 2017, Vijaywada resident Rajesh Varma Dasi has been documenting the butterflies of Kondapalli Reserve Forest, an isolated forest patch in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh. “Over three years, I recorded 67 species and worked with the Forest Department and helped them set up a butterfly park at Mulapadu, Kondapalli Reserve Forest. The Vijayawada Adventure club provided on-field support,” he says.

In 2020, Rajesh and Raja formed the Vijayawada Nature Club. They started conducting nature walks for like-minded adults and kids over weekends, to encourage them to participate in nature and share their observations on iNaturalist and their WhatsApp group. 

Species of the Eastern Ghats

“As of now, there are no endemic butterfly species in the Eastern Ghats,” says Rajesh. “However, the painted jezebel is found only in Papikonda National Park, with some sparse sightings around the northern Eastern Ghats. It is widely recorded in Northeastern India and Southeast Asia. We are fortunate enough to have this butterfly thriving here in large numbers.” In fact, in 2021-22, the Malabar raven (thought to be a Western Ghats endemic) was found in the Eastern Ghats, with others like the Tamil treebrown, southern birdwing, common mime, and Malabar rose. He points out that some other Northeastern species recorded in the Eastern Ghats are tree yellow, great nawab, common birdwing, vagrant, Pallas’ sailor, red Helen, and yellow pasha.

Butterflies are magical. Under a microscope, butterfly wings have scales that appear like roof tiles. Butterfly colours come from the way light interacts with the pigments found in these scales and the structure of these scales (structural colour). It’s the shiny scale pigment that sometimes runs onto you if you touch or brush against a butterfly. “I often tell people to be like a butterfly…” says Isaac, “whoever you come in contact with, give them your colours and let them shine.”